Miniaturization of consumer electronic and communication products such as personal computers, mobile phones and wearable smart devices are driving demand for semiconductor packages with smaller footprint. However, as integrated circuit (IC) package technology advances, an increasing number of input/output (I/O) connections is required on the semiconductor package to integrate complex circuit designs and provide better package performance.
Grid array packages and leadframe-based packages, such as ball grid array (BGA) packages and quad flat no-lead (QFN) packages, are popular packaging solutions for reducing package size and increasing I/O connections. However, existing grid array and leadframe-based packages suffer from various design and production limitations. For example, fabrication of BGA packages is relatively costly and vulnerable to moisture-related manufacturing defects. As for QFN packages, the need to maintain a minimum pitch between I/O connections in QFN packages impedes efforts to further reduce package size.
From the foregoing discussion, there is a desire to provide an improved semiconductor package having higher I/O counts and a smaller footprint. It is also desirable to provide a cost-efficient method of producing such a semiconductor package.